Israel No Longer Appears On Flickr Maps [UPDATE: Been Re-Added!]

With a new CEO, Yahoo! hopes to bring Flickr back to life and make it the number one destination for photographers. With the renewed efforts, as MegaPixel revealed today, Flickr may have made one bad move, as they have erased Israel from their maps. The name of the country is still there, and also the names of 3 cities, but anything other than that has been removed: cities, villages, streets and roads. So far no comment from Flickr on this issue.

This change to their map services means no one can use Flickr's Geotagging services on photos taken in Israel - whether they are citizens of the country, or tourists who visit Israel.

When looking at any other country on Flickr Maps, everything looks OK- everything appears. The only place on the globe that is missing is Israel, and to me thats weird. Why? Flickr is popular in Israel and even their Prime Minister is using it regularly. No one is sure if this was a conscious decision made by Flickr, or if its a bug in the system. Any attempt to get a response from the company has yet to be answered.

When using Google Maps, all towns and street names appear when looking for Israel:

The same exact view on Flickr Maps show the empty country:

Flickr are using an open map service called Leaflet. Leaflet uses a map database from openstreetmap.org - which actually does have a detailed map of every city in Israel. So it means one of 2 options: 1. Someone decided to erase anything related to israel on Flickr, or 2. something in the API is causing some issues and wont pass any info about Israel. The final result is the same: Israel is not on Flickr Maps.

I'm not sure what is the reason Flickr are not using OpenStreetMaps for Israel, the same way they use it for places like Tokyo, Beijing and other places Nokia Maps cant provide accurate maps for.

It's an interesting situation in the least, and possibly incredibly offensive at the most. Why do you think Israel has been excluded? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

UPDATE 1: As requested by our readers, we changed the title of this article.

UPDATE 3: A representative from Yahoo! emailed the following note after reading the post on The Huffington Post: "The geographical data that appears on Flickr and Yahoo! Maps comes from a third party map provider and we are working with them to understand and improve the gap in geographic coverage that has been reported. Yahoo! always wants to ensure the best possible product experience for our users, and this falls short of those expectations. We are continually working to source and roll out coverage where there is room to provide greater mapping details. In particular, we hope and expect that you will see improved maps coverage of Israel shortly."

UPDATE 4: One day after writing this post, Flickr fixed the issue and added Israel back to their maps as seen below. Success. Thanks Flickr for addressing the issue.

Noam Galai is a Senior Fstoppers Staff Writer and NYC Celebrity / Entertainment photographer. Noam's work appears on publications such as Time Magazine, New York Times, People Magazine, Vogue and Us Weekly on a daily basis.

Flickr Maps and Nokia maps are using an open map service called Leaflet. Leaflet uses a map database from another site called openstreetmap.org which actually does have very detailed street maps of every city in Israel. So it means one of 2 options: 1. Someone decided to erase anything related to israel, or 2. something in the API is causing some issues and wont pass any info about Israel. The final result is the same: Israel is not on Flickr's map. as a paying user - i dont care who is in charge of their maps - i want to see my country in there.

Hi guys, this is Pino from Nokia.
Just to be clear, Israel was not taken out of the map.

Nokia has maps for almost 200 countries that power services like Bing Maps, Yahoo! Maps and since roughly one year also flickr.
Unfortunately, we currently do not have high quality maps for Israel, which is why your mapping experience on flick is poor. We are working on it because we are committed to extend or improve our map coverage everywhere.

1. Flickr might be using Nokia Maps for most of the countries, but also uses OpenStreetMap data for cities/countries Nokia Maps dont have enough data for.
2. OpenStreetMap have a very detailed map of Israel. If flickr are using them for places like Beijing or Tokyo - they can use it for Israel.

I hope this somehow bites you on the ass. I'm not sure if it can or will, but I would really like it to.

People like you are a fucking disgrace. You've got control of a public blog, read by hundreds of thousands of people, and rather than use it for something positive, you instead use it to drum up negativity by accusing a completely innocent company of antisemitism.

I really dont care if its Israel or England that are missing. Im here to say its wrong, and should be fixed. If you find that it happens for other countries let me know and ill make sure to change the story.
I never said Flickr are antisemites. I'm a big fan of Flickr and really have no reason to call them that way.

True - because its my country, and using that map to tag the photos I took there I found out about it. It happens. If NYC or Denmark will be missing from the map I'll find it as interesting and will make the same accusations. Not sure what you want.

The fact Nokia have no good maps of Israel is known, and unrelated to the post. They are not the ones to blame and I really appreciate the fact he came here and apologized for that. But its not explaining why Israel is not on Flickr.

The Oath required for naturalized US citizenship contains a pledge to renounce all allegiance to foreign states:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce
and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate,
state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject
or citizen"